Vita - Life Insurance, Critical Illness and Income Protection

This is the story of one of our clients from London, telling of her experience since being diagnosed with Cancer:

During safety briefings on airlines we are told to put our own oxygen mask on first, before helping anyone else. Critical Illness insurance was my oxygen mask. If I may share any lessons with you as you read these case studies and you try to decide whether you will invest your hard earned money in a Critical Illness insurance policy, I would say in the kindest and loudest voice - please prioritise yourself.

I encourage you to buy Critical Illness cover if you have none and to buy more if you already have some. I purchased a policy through Vita and less than a year later I was diagnosed with cancer. I am a health conscious woman with a very healthy diet, enjoyed regularly exercise and had no personal or family history of major illness, so my Dr was astounded when I was diagnosed with cancer. I am grateful that the lump sum payment I received within 1 month of diagnosis provides some financial security for my future. You may have seen the ads on TV educating us that 1 in 2 people born during or after the 1960s will be diagnosed with cancer within their life.

So lesson #1 is to have Critical Illness cover.

Lesson # 2 is to ensure you have as much as you afford. The world we live in becomes more expensive every year and more people survive cancer than die from it. So please ask yourself, if you were to be diagnosed, and survive, what quality of life do you want for yourself? Would you have the energy to return to work and keep working after treatment has finished? Would you even want to keep working in the same role you currently have? So many people survive 5, 10, 20 years so please think about what your life could be like if you received a lump sum payment. I am not suggesting it is a replacement for Income Protection or Term Insurance as that is for you to decide.

Lesson # 3 is I should have valued myself more. I have Term/Life insurance in place to take care of people when I die, but it had not occurred to me I may become ill and actually survive for a long time. As is human nature I cared more about people I will at some stage leave behind than I did for myself. So I'd taken out higher value cover on Term/Life Insurance than I did on Critical Illness. In hindsight for me that should have been the other way around.

The irony is if I had insured myself with more Critical Illness cover then those around me would have seen me really enjoying life and we could all create more positive memories together. If I had taken out more Critical Illness cover I would have the freedom to change the type of work I do or even go travelling for a few years and still have money for retirement. I do hope this has helped at least one person.

To find out more about the importance of having Critical Illness cover, please click here.